Learn from Fitness Failure

Last week, I discussed the concept of looking for a mentor who has successfully accomplished the same type of goal that you desire. Time and time again, a new business becomes successful by emulating other successful businesses. Why not do the same thing when you are trying to lose body fat? It certainly can and should be done.

Well, a coin always has two sides. Now, it is time to look at the other side...and it isn't very pleasant or shiny!

Sometimes, it is valuable and important to learn from failure. Failure shows us what NOT to do. Failure shows us what doesn't work. Specific to weight loss, what if we could learn from others that failed to lose body fat? Thankfully, the National Weight Control Registry's (NWCR), located at www.NWCR.ws, has more than just solutions to weight loss. They also record the events and circumstances that caused people to fail. Think about how valuable it will be, and how much time you will save, if you take the time and energy to avoid the things that have proven to lead not to success...but to failure.

1) If the point hasn't been drive home enough, already, the NWCR also found a common characteristic of those people that FAILED to maintain their weight loss. What was it? Simply stated: the people that failed to maintain weight loss failed to continue their behavioral changes that brought them success in the first place. In other words, they stopped eating right and exercising.

2) Here is another interesting fact to help motivate you to keep the weight off. The likelihood that people will regain weight consistently drops as time passes. So, the longer you practice the habits of eating intelligently and exercising properly, the more you reduce the chance that you will ever gain the weight back. This explains why fad diets don't work! The change must become permanent, and "quick" fixes just don't do the trick. Failure tip: stay motivated to keep the weight off for a long time, so that you don't fall back into the old, unhealthy, life-destroying habits that once plagued you.

3) Sadly, life-endangering medical issues seem to be the best motivator and predictor of successful weight loss. The study clearly showed that people who made the decision to lose weight after a medical scare both lost weight faster and kept it off longer. Do yourself a favor and think ahead...before your doctor asks you to sit down, so that she can explain that your excess fat is literally killing you.

4) Do you need more motivation to keep the weight off? At the National Weight Control Registry, they also found this disturbing statistic: for those people who had regained some of their lost weight, only 11% returned to their previous lowest weight point in the following year. Let us give you an example. Let's say that a person has successfully gone from 200 pounds down to 150 pounds. However, the person backslides and gains back 30 pounds. Experience shows that only 11 out of 100 people will be able to drop the weight back down to 150 pounds over the next year. Keep in mind that these are people that had already successfully lost weight and knew exactly what to do to lose the weight they had re-gained. Logically, much more than 11% should have been able to return to their previous baseline weight. They had the knowledge. They had the experience. They knew what worked for their body. Sadly, though, logic does not always lead to success.

We can summarize all of these "failure points" pretty easily, can't we? In essence, people failed because they failed to continue with the habits that created the initial success.

Perhaps, though, you haven't yet experienced successful weight loss. Don't let that be an obstacle for you. Use this article to motivate you to make a serious commitment...a lifelong one...so that you develop a true change in your lifestyle. You learned last week that several lifestyle changes lead to true fat loss success. You learned this week that working on fat loss with a short-term view in mind is not nearly as successful, and instead, often leads directly to failure. So, decide now to develop the habits that are necessary to transform your body into one that you are proud of.

Author: Jeremy Nelms

Jeremy Nelms and his wife, Alissa Nelms, are known as "The World's Happiest Fitness Couple!" You can visit their website and read more articles, as well as follow their personal training journals and fitness adventures at http://www.TheFitCouple.com .

Keywords : fat loss, failure, weight loss, Jeremy Nelms, Alissa Nelms, TheFitCouple.com

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